Yellow Snaps
by shaunathan
Summary: Driven to the brink, Yellow does the unthinkable.


Giovanni lacked words to convey his total and complete shock. As his last Pokemon hit the floor with a dull thud, he stared in utter amazement at this little girl who had somehow managed to knock out his entire team, one by one, one hit each, with only a single Raticate. He lacked the Pokedex duplicate that had allowed him to tell the power levels of Pokemon in the past, but even without it, he knew that the girl's Raticate... no, her entire team... must have been level 100, if not still more powerful than that.

The girl herself, Yellow, if he recalled, stood on the other end of the battlefield, her fists balled by her side and her amber eyes glaring fiery holes into Giovanni's. She shook with barely suppressed rage.

"I'm... impressed," he began, but Yellow cut him off with a question spoken in a deadly quiet, razor sharp tone.

"Where is he?"

Giovanni knew who she was talking about, but he had no answer. "That... I can't—"

She once again interrupted, launching herself across the battlefield at him and clearing the distance with a speed that made him flinch in surprise. She reached up and grabbed his shirt collar. She was so intimidating in her fury that, despite her short stature, he felt as though he was backed into a corner by a giant. "I asked you," she hissed in a dangerous voice, and then raised it into a feral shout with flecks of spit shooting into his face for her next words. "WHERE IS HE?"

Giovanni recoiled instinctively. He was never one to flinch from danger, having trained himself through his many years as both a gym leader and Team Rocket's boss to face danger head on with a stone face, but for some reason, in the face of this little girl's rage, he shrunk back like a cornered animal. "Yellow," he said in a constricted voice, attempting to keep the fear out of his timbre. "I... There's no good way to say this—"

"SAY IT!" she roared, appearing once again to grow yet more imposing before his eyes.

"He's dead," Giovanni blurted in terror, failing to take time to think through his words. His weakness and her wrath had forced the answer out of him. Trembling, he went on, "We captured the boy and... executed him."

Yellow looked like she'd been shot. Shock and despair replaced the anger that had been erupting in her eyes, and she lost focus. Giovanni attempted to use her momentary lapse to wriggle away from her and flee, but when he tried, her fist clenched even tighter around his shirt, holding him in place, and a warning hiss from her Raticate convinced him to stop struggling.

"You..." she muttered eventually, the fire returning to her glare. "You burned down my forest..." Her voice was growing in volume, and Giovanni imagined that she grew even taller. The scorching fire in her eyes was back in full force, but this time there was something different about it, a... a remote deadness that chilled him to the bone. "You injured my uncle... and NOW... NOW YOU KILLED THE ONLY MAN I EVER LOVED?!"

Giovanni's throat went dry. Panic was setting in, especially realizing that he was all alone with no defense, entirely at her mercy. "Yellow, I know how you must feel—"

"BRING HIM BACK!"

The shout took him by surprise. "Bring him...? I don't... I don't follow—"

White hot pain erupted in the side of his face as she lashed out and struck him across the face with her free hand, gouging into his skin with her fingernails. She lowered her hand, fingertips now slick with his blood, and glared at him with the intensity of a guillotine. "BRING. HIM. BACK."

Giovanni wanted to raise a hand to his cheek to wipe away the blood, but he didn't dare move. "Yellow..." he explained, hoping that by some miracle he might be able to talk some sense into her. "He's dead. I can't bring him back. Nobody can."

Suddenly, she used the hand holding his shirt to thrust him forward, catching him off balance and knocking him to the floor on his back. Before he had a chance to react, she slammed her foot into his face in a vicious stomp. He felt his nose shatter under her boot and barely resisted howling in agony.

"BRING HIM BACK!" she screamed again, kicking him in the ear this time. "I WON'T STOP UNTIL YOU BRING HIM BACK!"

The toe of her boot connected with his jaw, knocking it slightly off center. When he tried to reply, he found his mouth unresponsive, and managed only a weak, almost whispered, "I... can't."

She didn't strike him again. Instead, she withdrew ever so slightly. A grin spread across her face, but it contained neither humor nor joy. Its disconnect with her furious glare made his blood tremble. He'd been called evil before. He thought he knew what the word meant. But he was wrong. Until he saw this little girl staring down at him with fury distorting every part of her face, grinning maniacally while her eyes burned holes into his soul, he'd been blissfully unaware of the visage of true evil.

"Okay then," she said, still smiling the mad grin. She looked down at her Raticate, and an insane giggle, almost like a muscle spasm, rippled out of her throat. "Ratty? Kill."

Giovanni heard the Raticate leap, felt its teeth impale his throat, and then, he felt no more.


End file.
